OPPO F3 Plus Review; Doble Vista

OPPO started the selfie revolution, not only in the Philippines, but across the globe when they introduced the F series, particularly when the F1 Plus was released. The said device boasts 16MP f/2.0 secondary snapper, which has higher resolution and better aperture than the 13MP f/2.2 camera mounted on its back.

Since then, several brands have followed their footsteps, and cranked up the front-facing selfie-shooter to be relevant, if not the main highlight of their handset. But, when the competition heats up, OPPO raised the bar one step higher, thus the birth of OPPO F3 Plus, the Dual Camera Selfie Expert.

It is the current flagship device of the top global manufacturing brand,
priced at Php23,990, it is the second most expensive OPPO phone that
lands in the country next to the Find 7.
But, that SRP is still considerably reasonable, especially when
compared to high-end offerings of the competitors, and in general still
belongs to the upper midrange of the overall market spectrum.

PHYSICAL:

OPPO F3 Plus Unboxing and Hands-on

The OPPO F3 Plus is a huge beast that packs a large 6-inch display on its polished metallic body. Topped with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 to protect it against the usual dents and
scratches, plus another layer of protection is pre-installed in the
form of removable plastic film.

Front

The screen has an IPS panel and Full HD resolution for crisp and vibrant output with colors that incline more towards saturation. The sunlight legibility is not the best in the market, but still provides good readability outdoors. There is also an automatic brightness feature that works just fine, and an eye protection mode to reduce strain on your precious eyes.

Display Information

It measures 163.63mm x 80.8mm x 7.35mm, and weighs about 185 grams. It is as thin as the Apple iPhone 7 Plus and ticks 3 grams lower in the weighing scale. When compared to the OPPO F1 Plus, you will obviously notice that it gains few millimeters on its waistline, but do not get me wrong here, it is still voluptuous.

Back

Design wise, it has a strong resemblance with other devices in the F family. The striking difference aside from the two front cameras is the 0.3 ultra-fine six-string antenna lines that traverse at the back (3 at the top and 3 at the bottom), which replaces the traditional thick white bands. According to OPPO, it does not just give better aesthetics, but also better wireless signal reception.

OPPO F3 Plus Quick Review

In terms of ergonomics, handling a phone this big usually needs two hands, even if you have a huge fist, reaching buttons or the opposite letters on the keyboard is a bit unnatural, and it seems there is a tendency it might fall off.

By the way, we have the gold color version, but OPPO also unveiled a stylish matte black variant. For better understanding of its physical appearance you can watch the two videos above.

SOFTWARE:

Software

The OPPO F3 Plus runs on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with Color OS version 3.0.0i. There is nothing much changed, in fact, almost everything stayed the same way as before. The UI, icons, settings, gestures, and more are still practically identical to what we saw more than a year ago. The interface and everything remained iOS-ish. The only noticeable addition is Google Assistant, and thankfully, it works just fine.

We will not go deeper into this software thing aspect as we have covered it in the past, but if you still want to learn more about it, you can check http://www.oppo.com/en/coloros/

PERFORMANCE:

OPPO F3 Plus CPU-Z Info

Underneath its big body is Qualcomm's Snapdragon 653 chipset (also known as 652 Turbo, that is why in the above screenshot it shows 652) that has 8 CPU cores grouped into two clusters - 4 Cortex-A73 at 1.95GHz each plus 4 Cortex-A53 at 1.55GHz, paired with Adreno 510 graphics processing unit. This is considered a big leap from the MediaTek MT6755 Helio P10 found on OPPO's previous flagship device, F1 Plus. The RAM and ROM remain the same though, 4GB and 64GB respectively. Out of the 64GB of onboard storage, 52.27GB is available to the user, that is about 1.67GB short of OPPO F1 Plus' 53.94GB

Looking at the above numbers, we can safely say that it did great for its class. Yes, it is not as powerful as other devices with the flagship Snapdragon 835 (or even last year's 821) inside, but remember what's ticking inside is a mid-range chip, so it is unfair to compare it as such. But, if you place it side by side with its closest competitors in the market, the results are better that the Samsung Galaxy C9 Pro (uses the same chip) and the ASUS ZenFone 3 Zoom (with SD 625).

Of course, those are just numeric figures, in fact, none of it matters to most users, real-life performance is still the king. Thankfully, it is able to accomplish day to day tasks smoothly, multitasking is great too, and you can expect less to no hiccups when running multiple applications at the same time. It fared well with games like NBA2K17 and Modern Combat 5, same is true when rendering 3D drawings. What we observed, though, is that during intensive gaming, or working on resources-heavy apps, the phone tends to get a bit warm at the upper part.

CAMERA:

Camera UI

The camera interface changed a bit since we last saw it, most probably to give way to new settings and features. The five modes just above the shutter button, namely time-lapse, video, photo, beauty, and panorama, are still there, and arranged the same as before. The same is true with the shooting modes, you still get the following:

Normal - as the name implies, it is the usual or standard shooting mode

Ultra HD - in this mode, it captures multiple images of the same subject and combine them to create a picture with a huge 64MP (9216x6912) resolution

Various Filters - it allows users to add filters and watermark to images

Double Exposure - captures two different images, then overlay one on top of the other to produce interesting effects

GIF - yes, the name says it all, this mode creates animated images in GIF format

The main difference in terms of the layout is the placement of the camera toggle and shooting mode button, the former is now placed near the shutter key, while the latter now moves up top. This simple arrangement paves way for easier access of the added button, the normal and wide selfie toggle.

In general, the camera UI is simple and intuitive to use, there is little to no learning curve needed, especially when you have used an iPhone in the past, as their interface really looks similar.

Like we usually do to selfie-centric devices, we start digging deeper with the front-facing camera first. The OPPO F3 Plus has two cameras mounted in the front, a primary one with f/2.0 16-megapixel sensor and a secondary snapper with f/2.4 8-megapixel module. We have seen several phones with two cameras working side by side, but most of them have different approaches and implementations. For one, the Vivo V5 Plus uses the second camera unit to have better depth of field. But, the one in this device put it into better use, that is to have a wider field of view, which allows a greater subject to be framed at once, thus more people in group selfies or broader scenic background.

In essence, the two cameras in the front work independently of each other, so if you use the one with wider FoV (1.78mm focal length and f/2.4 aperture), you get an 8MP photo, while switching to the standard view (3.57mm focal length and f/2.0 aperture), you have 16MP image. That means, the output quality differs from each other. But of course, the secondary unit also aids the primary one when shooting in "blur mode" to achieve the bokeh selfie effect.

Selfie

Selfie with Blur Mode

Wide Selfie

Selfie Against the Light

Using the 8MP sensor, the shots taken under good lighting condition are generally good with enough details on them, however, fish-eye effect is noticeable. On the other hand, capturing stills using the 16MP module gives more lively colors and finer details, not to mention better low-light performance too. Although, you need to be a bit careful when shooting against the light, as the outcome mostly becomes overexposed or underexposed, most probably because both of the front cameras lacks auto focus.

Meanwhile, activating the "blur mode" gives users the so-called bokeh effect, wherein background is a bit washed out to give better highlight to the focused subject. Based on our experience, the camera really puts more weight on the foreground, however, blurring tends to overdo it at times wherein part of the subject becomes blurred as well.

Daylight

Day

Without HDR

With HDR

Low-Light without HDR

Low-Light with HDR

Night

Close-up

Closeup

Moving on the main shooter, OPPO equipped it with 16MP f/1.7 Sony IMX398 camera and Dual Pixel autofocus technology. It also has optical image stabilization (OIS), electronic image stabilization (EIS), and accompanied with dual-tone LED flash. For uninitiated, Dual Pixel is a kind of PDAF with more focus points for faster and more accurate focusing capability ((similar concept with the camera of Samsung Galaxy S7 and S8). Meanwhile, the f/1.7 aperture allows plenty of light to the sensor, that's about 60% more than f/2.2 aperture.

Just like its predecessor, the F1 Plus, the output images are consistently good with nice contrast, great dynamic range, and bright colors. However, zooming it in full size reveals noise due to post processing. Overall, the photos it produced are not far from what the flagship devices from big brands are able to deliver, the texture, sharpness and details are there, whether the images are shot in low-light, close-up or broad daylight.

In terms of video recording, both the front cameras can shoot up to 1080p resolution, while the one at the back can record up to 4K resolution.

CONNECTIVITY:

The Qualcomm chip inside the OPPO F3 Plus provides Category 6 LTE connectivity of up to 300Mbps down and 50Mbps up, that's on both SIM slots. If you do not have a data plan, you can always rely on its dual-band WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac module. And with the new six-string antenna design, the range is longer and signal is much stable. Positioning system is accurate through the GPS receiver with A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS, and Galileo support. Bluetooth V4.1 is fast for file transfer and when paired with other device. Sadly, no USB 3.0 here, as the phone is still stuck with version 2.0, most probably because of the VOOC Flash Charge technology. Thankfully, there is an OTG function to compensate for that. Meanwhile, the legacy of 3.5mm still lives on with the F3 Plus.

BATTERY:

PC Mark Battery Life Test

This handset comes with 4000mAh lithium-polymer non-removable battery with OPPO's proprietary fast charging technology, the VOOC Flash Charge. In our experience, it only takes 30 minutes to fill up the juice of 0% to about 60 minutes, and fully charged by around 80 minutes (charging becomes slow when almost full). In PC Mark Battery Test, it scored 11 hours and 42 minutes, that is about 5 minutes longer than the OPPO F1 Plus, and around half an hour less when compared to Huawei Mate 9 that has the same amount of battery.

CONCLUSION:

The OPPO F3 Plus is pretty much capable smartphone packed with octa core Qualcomm processor and 4GB of RAM for smooth performance, above average battery life, premium materials and good build quality, and solid imaging qualities of front and back cameras. It may be slightly premium than OPPO's usual offerings, but it has lots of good stuff in one basket. We just wished that they equipped the front snappers with AF cameras, especially that it is being marketed selfie expert handset.